# Apple Desktop Interface (アップル・デスクトップ・インターフェース)

> This is the design language Apple named itself, in the 1987 guidelines book whose subtitle reads The Apple Desktop Interface. Working with one bit of black and white, it wrote down a house style: halftone dot patterns standing in for gray, rounded window corners, a title bar of stacked horizontal rules, and a heavy bitmap face.

- IndexStyle No.511 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface
- Kind: Style · Family: Apple UI · Era: 1984–1997
- Mood: Trust, Technology, Nostalgia
- Color cues: #000000 / #FFFFFF / #7F7F7F (cues taken from reference works, not a fixed palette)

## Defining characteristics

- Two tones only, black and white, with gray faked by a checkerboard of black dots
- Window corners are rounded and the title bar carries several thin horizontal rules
- A menu bar pinned to the top edge of the screen, the Apple mark sitting at its left end
- Chicago, a heavy bitmap face whose letters are packed into a cell of 9 by 7 dots

## Best used for

- Redrawing early Macintosh screens for an exhibition panel or an article on a modern display
- Designing for a device that can only print or light two tones, such as e paper or a receipt printer

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: A heavy bitmap sans, letters placed only on whole pixel positions, no anti aliasing; headings differ from body text by size rather than weight.
- Layout & structure: A full width menu bar owns the top edge and everything below it is the work surface; rounded rectangular windows overlap freely and margins step in whole pixels.
- Material & texture: Black and white alone; middle values come from checkerboard or diagonal dot patterns, soft shadows and gradients are out, and every boundary is a one pixel black rule.

## What to avoid

Scaling the bitmap face by anything other than a whole number, or letting it anti alias, blurs the letterforms and erases the placed-by-hand dot density the style lives on.

## Application checklist

Before calling a piece an application of this style, check it against the defining characteristics:

- [ ] Two tones only, black and white, with gray faked by a checkerboard of black dots
- [ ] Window corners are rounded and the title bar carries several thin horizontal rules
- [ ] A menu bar pinned to the top edge of the screen, the Apple mark sitting at its left end
- [ ] Chicago, a heavy bitmap face whose letters are packed into a cell of 9 by 7 dots
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Aqua (アクア)** — Mac OS X's design language of buttons you want to lick. Jelly gloss, pinstripes, deep shadows and the genie effect staged digital components as objects you could touch, and set the terms for UI throughout the 2000s. What the web made of it with images is Web 2.0 Gloss. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/aqua
- **Pixel Art (ピクセルアート)** — Treats the pixel as an honest unit, building clear form from limited resolution and palette. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/pixel-art

## Further study

- 1987年のApple Human Interface Guidelines本体（Internet Archiveに現物がある）
- Susan Kareが方眼紙に鉛筆で描いたアイコン原図（MoMA所蔵のスケッチブック）
- System 1からSystem 7までの画面写真を並べ、網点の使い方がどう変わったか見る

## Reference works

- Macintosh System 3 の画面 1986 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:System%203.png
- Macintosh System 4.2 の MultiFinder 1987 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MultiFinder.png
- Microsoft《Office 2.5.1 for Macintosh》の画面 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Office%202.5%20for%20mac.png

## Source of record

- Internet Archive — Apple Computer, Inc., "Apple Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface" (Addison-Wesley, 1987) — https://archive.org/details/applehumaninterf00appl

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/apple-desktop-interface
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compose_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)